You can tell a lot about a man or woman by the company s/he keeps. You can also tell a lot by observing who their enemies are. Using the latter criterion, Jeremy Corbyn this morning must be feeling quite buoyant.
I remember the Gang of Four who departed the Labour Party and formed the SDP. You could say a lot about them but you couldn’t say they were unknowns. This time, though, the Seven Dwarfs hopping off the good ship Labour aren’t household names even in their own house. Except for Chuka Umanna, who used to get a spot regularly on the Question Time panel, all of the seven dwarfs were unknown to me. Their reasons for leaving? They don’t like Jeremy Corbyn as leader (he was elected by party members – twice) and British politics is ‘broken’, so come and join us. The fact that the first dwarf to the microphone introduced herself as “a Labour MP” and then doubled back to correct herself, tells you something about the sure-footedness of this lot. My guess is they saw de-selection as a spot on the horizon, coming fast, and decided to jump before being dumped. Will they resign their seats and stand for re-election as independents or members of The Independent group, as they call themselves? Ha! And Ha! Again. They’ll hang onto their seats as long as they can, which I predict will be the next British general election. Their long-term future? It’ll be caught up in the Brexit explosion and suffering from political shrapnel wounds, they will stagger off into obscurity and never be heard of again.
And did you hear that one of them was on radio and talked about non-white people looking peculiar? This new political group appears to have been constructed with a built-in suicide vest.
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